


The Odds

by alby_mangroves



Series: Words, not art [21]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Game of Thrones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Magical Artifacts, Rescue Missions, Who the hell needs parents anyway, white things that go bump and clang in the night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-20 09:43:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8244754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves
Summary: “Wait, you think we went back in time?” Bucky had lost any shred of incredulity long ago, but this was new, even for him. And then on the back of that thought, “Have we got any weapons?”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



> NB: Timelines have been fudged to make this work, aka: the AU where Loki's sceptre is housed in the same Siberian facility as another HYDRA Asset and CAtWS hasn't happened yet. 
> 
> Thanks to emjayelle and daroh for the lightning beta ♥

 

~ ♞ ✪ ♕ ~

 

It was here, in the bunker recessed into a snow-tipped mountain. Loki felt its calling and went to it on silent feet, cloaked in shadow and already smiling, hands itching for it.

Nobody noticed the switch or that the sceptre now in the receptacle was nothing more than a mirage; Loki would be well away with the real thing before anyone realized.

He was already strolling up the winding stairs with the satisfying clack of the staff echoing alongside his footsteps when he heard it; anguished screaming travelling up from the bowels of the ancient fortress, breaking upon its reinforced walls.

Loki stood and waited a moment to see if it would come again and when it did, he pursed his mouth and turned on his heel, for he knew that sound. There was no mistaking despair with no hope of mercy, not even that of the numbing hand of death.

The screaming had ceased by the time Loki reached the fortified chamber beneath the mountain. He looked around at the collection of artifacts and objects, sensing something in the room that clearly did not belong and traced the feeling to a glowing orb housed within a glass cylinder along a wall.

There were weapons here, too, and several armed men, but Loki dismissed all bar two: one restrained to a chair inset into a central dais, struggling and bathed in fearful sweat, and the other standing above him with a book forked open between his spread fingers, reciting words of power to bend the wild-eyed prisoner to his will.

The man in the chair had a metal shoulder and arm, the places where it had been fused to his flesh gnarled with scars like tree roots. Everything about him looked brutal, everything but the confusion and pain he was too weary to hide.

Loki tilted his head, observing the scene. He sensed no magic lacing the spell the prisoner’s guard was reciting, so the words themselves - though nonsense: furnace? Homecoming? - were the binding. The more words were said, the calmer the prisoner became, until the chair’s restraints fell away and he slumped forward, hiding his deadened eyes in a curtain of lank, dark hair. He sat compliant, a hooded hunting bird perched atop its master’s arm. A shudder seemed to go through him, the last of his resistance burned away. The guard smiled, then, and finally put aside the book, loosely clasping his hands at his back.

“Soldier, I have a mission for you.”

And that right there, was quite enough. Loki narrowed his eyes and moved, shedding the cloaking spell with every step.

The captive’s eyes flicked up but he did not rise, and by the time the others had noticed Loki in their midst, he had already incapacitated most of them, blasts from the sceptre sending them hurtling away. The prisoner’s eyes did not leave him, not even when the guard pulled his gun, training it on Loki and clicking back the safety with trembling fingers.

“Stop right there,” he shouted, and Loki grinned, holding the captive’s eyes as he flicked a spark toward the little red book, setting it aflame on the metal shelf where it lay. Then he strolled to the dais and swung his staff in a graceful arc, sending the shrieking guard on a short flight, destination: concrete wall.

When all was quiet, Loki faced the captive, his hand curled loosely around the sceptre.

“Your tormentor is still living, should you want that honour,” Loki said.

The captive blinked as though he did not quite understand, and looked away, staring with a confused sort of intensity into the yellow flames devouring the book.

Loki appraised him, then tsked at the man's stony glare.

“Well, this simply will not do,” Loki said, and gently touched the captive's temple with the sceptre’s gleaming blue point, removing the spell which had made his own mind into an oubliette.

And it would have been fine for the captive to fold to his knees with his hands twisted in his own hair, writhing in agony on the stone floor while his mind was returned to him all in a flood, had it not been for the stampede of armed men bursting into the room in a flurry of gunfire at the same time.

“Not a moment’s respite,” Loki muttered, and set about doubling, then quadrupling himself throughout the room in order to thin out their ranks. He thought to confuse and distract them and scatter their bullets so he might collect the fascinating glowing orb and disappear with his prizes, leaving the rabble for their former captive to deal with as he saw fit.

He turned to the captive and opened his mouth for pithy words of farewell, when the immense heat of an explosion slapped him wide across his back, sending him flying straight into the man he'd rescued, and beyond that, into darkness. 

 

~ ♞ ✪ ♕ ~

 

When Bucky came to, he was Bucky. His whole body hurt and his head pounded like a bastard, but it was his own head, his own damned mind. He groaned and stretched out on his back, and even that was new, for when was the last time he had woken of his own accord?

He smelled smoke first, then felt the warmth of a fire, and when he opened his eyes, there was a blanket over him and a roof above him and another man leaning on a staff by a window, looking out. His rescuer.

“Who are you,” Bucky croaked, rolling up to sit, rubbing life into his face.

“That is not nearly as interesting as _where_  am I,” said the man, beckoning Bucky to join him at the window. “Or perhaps, _when_.”

It was winter outside, the dead, frozen heart of winter. Bucky stared at the unfamiliar tundra. Above the treeline, a wall of ice stretched up like a monolith, at once similar to the mountain which housed his prison and nothing like it at all. Even the trees were weird.

“What the hell,” Bucky muttered.

“There was an explosion, something in your prison with the power to bring us both here. Any idea what it was?”

Bucky huffed a laugh. “Pal, if I knew what it was I’d have used it to get out of there years ago.”

He eyed his rescuer, and then stuck his right hand out. “I’m Bucky Barnes, and I owe you my thanks. My life, probably.”

“Loki,” said Loki, shaking Bucky’s hand with a grin, then looking him over from his long hair to the tips of his bare toes. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said, and with a flick of his hands made Bucky’s cryo pressure suit disappear beneath fitted and armoured black leather garb with a set of heavy boots to match and leaving his left arm bare, like something medieval straight out of Steve’s illustrated books. Oh god, _Steve_. Loki had given him back memories of Steve.

Bucky clenched his fists and swallowed hard, then stared down at himself, his metal arm gleaming in the scarce light. Loki was already moving about the small cabin, dousing the fire with dirt.

“Now you’ll fit right in and won’t freeze to death.”

“That would be nice,” Bucky said quietly. And then, practicality taking over, “Where are we that this get-up will fit right in?” The leather creaked satisfyingly as he moved about, testing the stretch and flex of it.

Loki then told him of the reconnaissance he’d made while Bucky slept off the hit dealt by the sceptre, the men he’d seen, dressed much like Bucky was dressed now, and the distinct lack of machines or indeed, technology.

“Wait, you think we went back in time?” Bucky had lost any shred of incredulity long ago, but this was new, even for him. And then on the back of that thought, “Have we got any weapons?”

Loki grinned. “I see I made the right choice, for once,” he said, and stepped out of the dilapidated cabin and into the woods.

“Which way shall we take?” Loki said, looking between the wall of ice and a track leading away along the edge of the forest, but Bucky was already moving.

“No way I’m going back in there, wrong century or not,” he muttered with a sharp shake of his head, and Loki laughed, following in his wake.

 

~ ♞ ✪ ♕ ~

 

They’d been steadily making their way away from the wall of ice, staying between the forest and the open road, within reach of the shelter of trees. Snow crunched under their feet and the sun had reached its zenith when Bucky looked up with a start.

“We’re about to have company,” he said, and they hid amongst the trees, waiting.

Before long, a cavalry of armed men on horseback began to appear. Bucky turned to suggest that they retreat further into the forest, but Loki was already moving, walking out into the middle of the road and straight into the path of the oncoming army.

“Fuck,” Bucky whispered, then cursed his luck in always befriending fools with no sense of self preservation, and followed, planting himself menacingly at Loki’s left, where his metal arm could be seen to best advantage.

Moments later, the head of the army, a grizzled, bearded man, halted his horse before them while the rest of his army continued on, parting around them like a river.

“Nothing that way but death,” said the horseman. “I suggest you turn back while you can.”

“It does not look like you fought a losing battle,” Loki said, looking around at the relatively fresh horses, the unbloodied men.

“No, indeed it does not look like it,” said the man quietly, looking out over the army of soldiers passing them by.

“Ser Davos, we must make the Wall before nightfall if we are to return to King Stannis with timely reinforcements,” someone called out, and the man bowed his head, nodding.

“If you must continue, keep your wits about you. You will need them out here, especially at night.”

Ser Davos spurred his horse on and they both stepped aside to let the army pass.

“Well, at least now we know a little more, which is to say, almost nothing at all,” Loki mused, and on they went, for what else was there to do but push forward?

 

~ ♞ ✪ ♕ ~

 

It was nearly night again when they heard the sounds of a great many men assembled in one place. They were gathered out on a plain, and appeared to be engaged in a ceremony of some kind.

Bucky threw a blanket over his arm as they came closer and skirted the loosely assembled soldiers, the haze of snow falling at dusk helping their cause. He looked to the head of the gathering where a stake had been raised, and beneath it a bed of wood.

“Holy cow, is that a - ”

“Indeed it is,” Loki said, his head tilted in consideration.

“But she’s just a child,” Bucky whispered, watching in horror as a woman stepped forward from the ranks, in her hand a flaming brand. The girl at the stake began to beg and scream.

“I think they mean to sacrifice her,” Loki mused quietly, still taking in the scene, listening, watching, but Bucky had had enough.

“No,” he said, and ran, for no matter what else he had done, he would not do _this_ , he would not let this happen, but he had not yet reached the dais before the woman bent to light it, and then it was a bonfire and the girl was screaming. Bucky saw nothing but a screaming child through flames and smoke and then he was upon the woman, knocking her to the ground and leaping up to reach the terrified girl upon the pyre.

He looked over his shoulder to find the woman looking on, stunned where she lay sprawled upon the frozen ground, and Loki quietly watching him from amongst the soldiers. Bucky was hit with despair, the heat of the flames licking at his face. Perhaps he’d read the man wrong after all.

Bucky turned to the stake and snapped away the bindings, lifting the sobbing girl to his chest, the familiar weight like a stab through his heart. She was just a child, no older than Becca seeing him off to war so many lifetimes ago. What animals would do this to a _child_?

The fire had already begun to spread and he looked up once more to see the woman faintly smiling as she rose from the ground, having probably realised, as he now did, that two sacrifices would be burned this day, and not only one. The child in his arms pressed her face to his neck and Bucky looked frantically about for a place from which to jump and clear the flames, when commotion broke out in front of the bonfire.

A man had appeared painted in blue from black-haired head to naked feet - and seriously, could this get any stranger? - shouted, “This will not appease the gods!”

“There is but one true God, and you are not he,” the woman cried out in outrage.

Loki - because of course it was with that sharp nose and gleaming smile - Loki laughed, as if delighted and nodded modestly. “You are right. There are no falser gods than I,” he said, and the smile fell from his face as he pointed his hand toward the bonfire and turned it into a bracken of ice.

Bucky and the child could only stare as silence descended upon the soldiers, because now there were two, no, four! No, a multitude of blue Lokis, all assembled in a circle to guard Bucky’s descent down the pyre and to the horses which had been tied to a nearby tree. Another Loki, the true Loki, was seated atop a horse already, waiting for them, and both of them helped the girl to get up behind Bucky on the saddle.

“We’re gonna talk about this,” Bucky said, throwing Loki a sideways glance as they kicked their horses into a trot. Behind them, another woman had broken the soldiers' ranks and now ran screaming to them with her arms held out, but the child they'd rescued turned her head away and held on tighter still, arms clasped vise-like around Bucky’s waist, so he did not slow, and they were off, the three of them galloping away into the night. 

 

~ ♞ ✪ ♕ ~

 

The girl had been silent since they’d left the army camp, and Loki supposed she had gone into shock.

They’d made their way back into the deep of the forest so as not to be caught out on the open plain. They’d done well with the horses, the saddle bags yielded water canteens and small stores of food, as well as several weapons; Bucky’s eyes had grown huge at a folded sash of several beautifully turned and sharpened knives and he’d been toying with them and keeping them close ever since.

He was now busy cooking a small rabbit Loki had snared the way he and Thor did when they were boys together. Loki watched him roasting the skinny thing over a modest fire, and moved away to keep lookout, close enough to hear them and far enough that the glow of the fire did not affect his night vision.

“Your mother and father. They were there, weren’t they?” Bucky said quietly.

The girl nodded and wound her arms tighter around her legs, the firelight making the scars on her face dance. Loki watched Bucky’s jaw flex.

“Do not worry, child,” he offered, “the sting of it wears off eventually.”

“What?” Bucky said, looking up, frowning.

Loki blinked. “What?”

“Anyway, you’re safe now,” Bucky said after a moment. “Loki there has magic powers if you can believe that, and I’m pretty handy with a knife, and we’re gonna keep you safe.”

Which was, of course, the moment that a huge, pale man with glowing blue eyes stepped out from among the trees and all hell broke loose. Bucky whirled into action and put himself in front of the girl and suddenly Loki realised why his captors had called him the Soldier. Every movement had purpose and economy, and for a short while there was only the clanging and grunting of skilled combat and once, the piercing shriek of one of Bucky's new knives breaking on the pale creature's sword. Loki picked the child up and moved away to give Bucky room.

“Climb up high, child,” Loki said, hoisting the girl up to the lower branches of a huge, sprawling tree so he could help Bucky, whom he could see getting backed into a tree, fending off the strikes of a sword with his metal arm. He was bleeding from a cut to his leg.

“Shireen,” the girl said.

“Very well, Shireen. Climb up and stay quiet,” Loki said, and when he turned back, the intruder had Bucky up against a tree, sword wedged in the crease of Bucky’s metal elbow.

“On three!” Loki shouted, hoping Bucky had heard, though he gave no outward sign. He counted, and on three sent a blast from the sceptre straight at the pale warrior, and then Bucky, who had ducked the blast, reached up with his metal hand and grabbed the creature around the throat. The plates in his arm whirred and clicked as the metal fingertips pierced pale skin, and then suddenly there was a flurry of snow and ice where the creature had been, and Bucky with his arm outstretched in the air, metal fingers clawed around nothing.

“What the hell,” Bucky said, panting.

Loki leaned on the sceptre. “You know, the more I think about it, the less I think we went back in time. I do not think we are on Midgard at all.”

“Oh, you think so, huh,” Bucky said.

“It is said only dragonglass can kill them, or Valyrian steel,” Shireen said from her perch in the tree, her eyes wide on Bucky’s metal hand.

“What manner of creature was he? And how do you know all this?” Loki asked.

“A White Walker,” she said. “Ser Davos told me stories. I used to read to him, sometimes, and he would tell me stories. I thought they were just stories,” she whispered, looking down at Bucky with shocked eyes. “But you did it. You killed a White Walker.”

“We passed Davos and his army on the way to the ice wall yesterday,” Loki said.

“He’d been sent away,” Shireen said, soft voice breaking. “They’d sent him away, before.”

“Bastards,” Bucky muttered darkly, picking up and sheathing his remaining knives, the plates in his arm calibrating, metal flickering in the firelight.

“Well,” Loki said, considering, then kicked dirt over the tiny fire, sending the clearing back into darkness. It was much safer that way. “At least now we know where we must go. It seems that your Davos is one to stick with, after all. But we will have to move slowly now that we must evade an army as well as these White Walkers in the woods. It will be a tough journey back.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve seen worse odds,” Bucky said, readying their horses as Loki helped Shireen down from the tree, and for the first time since they had known her, Shireen’s face brightened with a smile.

 

~ ♞ ✪ ♕ ~


End file.
